by James Maxey
Behind him, he heard thunder. He looked over his shoulder in time to see Sarah flash back into the room. She came to a halt, trailing smoke.
“How was space?” he asked.
“That bitch sent me into space!” said Sarah. “Wait, you knew?”
“We had a little chat after you left,” said App. “Your pressure suit saved your life?”
“It did its job this time since I hadn’t been dumb enough to turn it off,” she said. “Still only had the air in my lungs and a tiny bubble caught in my helmet. Fortunately, I only needed a second to get my bearings. You know how in movies spaceships are engulfed in flames on reentry? Turns out that’s a thing. I had to slow down to keep from baking myself.”
“You might have a second chance at getting burned to death,” said App. “Sister Amy said she was about to cleanse the world in a firestorm. I don’t believe she was speaking metaphorically.”
“Okay,” said Sarah. “Then… nukes? She somehow has control of the nuclear arsenal?”
“Why not?” asked App. “She can take over anyone’s mind. Why not take control of the president and make him give the command?”
Sarah pulled out her phone and pressed a button. “This is Skyrider,” she said to whoever picked up the line. “This is a priority call for the President. Security code gamma nine beta nine whiskey seven. Initiate full bunker protocol against psionic incursion. Please acknowledge.” She paused, waiting for a response, then said, “Thank you.”
“You have a hotline to the president?” App asked.
Sarah shrugged. “Mother has a lot of powerful friends. Luckily, the White House wasn’t happy about dealing with my father when he used his telepathy to get his way, so they built a bunker beneath the White House with psionic baffles that’s supposedly shielded from all telepathic access. Dad used to get a chuckle out of it. The shields worked, apparently, and the president and his team used to meet in the bunker to figure out how to deal with my Dad. But the second anyone left the room, he’d know what they’d discussed. He said the only way to it would have really worked would be if they never left the room.”
“Great. But the president isn’t the only one with nukes.”
“No,” she said. “But Mother says that the Russian military was so corrupt that she’s been able to cripple their nuclear capabilities just by throwing money around. They have a lot of missiles sitting in silos that won’t go anywhere because the rocket fuel has been sold on the black market. Lots of other missiles are essentially empty shells because terrorists have paid top dollar for the fissionable material.”
“So we have to worry about her taking control of those terrorists?”
“Only if the terrorists were real and not a CIA black op funded by my mother.” Sarah knelt over her mother once more. “I’m guessing Sister Amy didn’t notice mom was here, or she would have finished the job Chimpion started. She may be telepathic but she’s not omniscient. She obviously didn’t know my suit was pressurized, and she apparently didn’t know you you’d be immune to her telepathy in ghost mode.”
“Hoping that her plan has big holes isn’t exactly a strategy,” said App. “We’ve got to find Servant. Clint said they were draining his power. We free him, and we cut off their power supply.”
“Finding him might take forever,” said Sarah. “We need to assume it’s just you and me.”
“Which effectively means it’s just you,” said App. “I’ll be controlled by her the second she realizes I’m free. Servant is the only good option we have. Give me your phone.” He reset himself, weighing the risk versus the reward and deciding to take the chance.
“Who are you going to call?” she asked, passing it to him.
“If I needed to make a call I’d use your mother’s phone. When my server went down, I lost my internet connection. But my belt has wi-fi so I want to use your phone as a hotspot. There are people online who might help us.”
“Gotcha. Password is InvisibleMan, capital I, capital M.”
“Excellent,” he said, typing on the onscreen keyboard. The seconds dragged, but after half a minute he had data streaming again. He logged into the App Room. “My spectrum vision was stored on the server but I’m hoping one of my developers will have a backup copy. If they’re using Servant to generate power, there’s no way they can be 100% efficient in the power transfer. If I had infrared vision, I could probably spot where they’re venting any waste heat, which would get us pretty close.”
“You think they brought him here?”
“They brought the whole damned city.”
“Right,” she said. “We don’t need your powers to look for a heat vent. I have infrared in my helmet.” She flitted out the busted window. “Hold on.” She drifted slowly in the desert wind as she scanned the surroundings. “Holy cow!”
“What?”
“I either found Servant or a nuclear reactor about a minute away from meltdown. There’s a ceramic chimney in the rear of what I’m guessing is the temple. It’s white hot.”
App moved to the window. “Awesome. I need to keep your phone though. CodeDog has a back-up of my spectrum vision and airbag mode. He’s downloading them into the belt, but it’s going to take at least ten minutes.”
“I don’t think we have ten minutes,” said Sarah. “Can we hunt for Servant while you update?”
“I’m game,” he said. “What should we do about your mom?”
“There’s a safe room behind that painting. We’ll lay her on the cot in there then seal the door.”
“Sounds like a plan. Let’s go save the world.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Go to Hell
“Do you still have your foam mode?” Sarah shouted above the roar of the wind as she veered toward the brick chimney.
“As luck would have it, yes,” App said.
“Foam up. We’re heading right into the heart of the furnace.”
App foamed up as they reached the heat plume of the chimney. The heat distorted the air around them. They dropped until they touched down on a red hot iron grate. There was an access door in the center. Sarah knelt and tried to move it but it was locked.
“Can’t stay here long,” she said. “The heat is overloading the cooling systems in my suit. Wish I hadn’t got rid of the energy absorbing mesh after our fight with Sundancer.”
“I can switch to acid mode,” said App.
“You’ll fry before this grate gives,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.”
They flashed back up the chimney.
“We’re going to find another way in?” asked App.
“Nope,” she said, setting him down on the lip of the chimney. “We’re going to use brute force. Give me a second. There’s construction gear all around. It won’t take me long to find what I need.”
She swooshed down into the alleys surrounding the temple, aiming for a tower that was under construction about a quarter mile away. She flew back seconds later carrying a pair of cinder blocks.
“Keep back,” she called out as she zoomed past him and shot into the sky until she was just a speck. He looked around. The rim of the chimney was maybe a foot thick. Where the hell was he supposed to go?
He looked up and leaned back as far as he could, giving Sarah a clear path as she rocketed back toward the chimney, holding the cinder blocks before her. Fifty feet up, she dropped the blocks and veered away. App waved his arms to balance himself as the rush of wind from the passing blocks caught him. The whole chimney shuddered and he toppled backward. He was about to switch to ghost mode when Sarah circled back and plucked him from mid-fall.
“Maybe warn a guy next time,” he said.
“I said keep back,” she answered.
They whipped around and dove back into chimney. The cinder blocks had shredded the iron grate. They slipped through with ease. They reached some of the scaffolding they had seen further down and found an iron access door.
“I’ll ghost through then hit the door hinges with acid,” said App.<
br />
“Do it,” she said.
He did it. Thirty seconds later, the door dropped from its hinges. Sarah came through. “Did I hear gunshots?”
“Yeah,” said App, nodding toward a fallen guard at the end of the hall. “Your cinderblock trick wasn’t exactly stealthy. There’s probably more on the way.”
“Fine,” she said. “Maybe I can convince one of them to lead us to Servant.”
“That isn’t going to be a problem,” said App, moving toward the iron door at the end of the corridor. “Look at this.”
On the back of the door was a safety map showing the routes to the nearest exits.
“Nice of them to comply with OSHA regulations,” said Sarah as she studied the map. Though it couldn’t have been the intent of the designer, the mapped out evacuation routes did a surprisingly effective job of showing the part of the building that most people would want to run from.
“That’s got to be where the energy siphon is located,” said App, tapping the map. “I’ve transmitted the map to CodeDog. He’s got a program that will turn it into a 3-d map for us to follow. You ready to do this?”
“I’m ready for heavy drinking but I’ll do this instead,” said Skyrider, as the sound of men running in heavy boots came from the other side of the door.
“I got this,” said App. “Dense mode!” With his enhanced strength, he kicked the door open. There were three men running toward them. They skidded to a halt and raised their rifles but in the half second it took for them to act App was already on the move, summersaulting to the midpoint between them and kicking into the chest of the first guard. All three men went sprawling. One squeezed the trigger of his rifle and sparks flashed around the concrete walls as the bullets bounced wildly. Two seconds later, all the guards were out cold as App landed powerful punches to their heads.
“Man,” he said. “I needed that. There’s some days when hitting people is the only thing that makes you feel like there’s hope in the world.”
“Savor your testosterone rush later,” said Sarah, grabbing him by the forearm and lifting him into the air. “Which way?”
“Left,” he said, as the 3-D map overlay appeared in his vision. “We’re heading for a locked doorway.”
“You strong enough to bash through?”
“Sure but I’m also smart enough to have grabbed this keyring off the lead guard,” he said, jingling the keys.
They landed in front of the door. He tried four keys of what had to be at least thirty, then gave up and kicked the door in.
They flew down the stairs, all the way to the lowest level.
“It’s going to be through this door,” he said.
“Kick it in,” she said.
Inside, they found two large angels, their armor and wings polished black and glinting in the glow of what seemed to be a captive sun floating between two pillars at the rear of the room.
A woman in white robes stepped from behind the angels.
“Kill her,” said Sister Amy, but she wasn’t speaking to the angels.
Fortunately, Skyrider wasn’t touching the floor. She spun just as App opened his mouth to speak. She didn’t know what mode he was going to use to attack her and didn’t plan to find out. She drove her elbow into his mouth with all her strength, knocking him backward. As he fell, she grabbed his arm and flung him around, slamming him into nearest wall hard enough to knock gravel loose, praying that, in his dense mode, she’d knock him out without killing him.
She turned back toward Sister Amy, preparing to accelerate to supersonic speed. It was a large room, but in an enclosed space the sonic boom would likely incapacitate all of her foes. She froze as she found herself staring at her mother, whose limp body was now held by one of the angels, a sword against her neck.
“Placing your mother in a safe room meant nothing to me now that I have control of the space machine,” said Sister Amy. “When App took out his guards, he didn’t bother to check to make sure they were dead. One regained consciousness as you were moving your mother. I knew where she was and I knew where you were going. Make one move and she dies.”
“You intend to kill her anyway,” said Sarah.
“She wasn’t present when Jerusalem was destroyed,” said Sister Amy. “I’m prepared to accept she had no part in that desecration. You, on the other hand, were at ground zero.”
“Watching someone else destroy the city.”
“Someone you could have stopped.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. Amelia was—”
“Out of control? Dangerous?” Sister Amy shook her head. “You called yourself a hero. You could have stopped her in any of a thousand ways, given your powers. You stood by and did nothing. The blame rests squarely on your shoulders. For that you must pay a price.”
Sarah nodded slowly. “You don’t think there’s a day of my life when I don’t second guess what I could have done? What I should have done? If you were gunning for me, there’s some small part of me that would probably be willing to surrender.”
“But you will surrender,” said Sister Amy. “Take off your helmet. Strip off your armor and kneel. When my angels remove your head, your mother will go free.”
“You still plan to trigger Armageddon.”
“That,” said Sister Amy, “is the Lord’s plan, not mine. Who are you to deny His will?”
“I’m Sarah Knowbokov.” Then she moved. Her strategy was still a good one. She hit the speed of sound on her way to the angel that held her mother. The shock would probably rupture her mother’s eardrums, maybe cause internal bleeding, but she had to count on the possibility that she’d survive this and be able to get her mother to medical care once Sister Amy was down for the count.
The shockwave sent Sister Amy flying. The angels’ armor kept them grounded, at least until she got her hands on the one who held her mother and accelerated him straight up into the roof. Her mother fell and she swooped down to catch her, racing her toward a far corner of the room. She had no time to check her vitals or even to be gentle as she placed her on the floor and swung back around. Assuming that the angels had the same sensory arrays in their helmets that Steam-Dragon had possessed, they were likely tracking her with radar. This was confirmed as a swarm of tiny missiles launched from their spiked shoulder pads. She smiled, slowing to give the missiles time to lock on, then yelled out, “Didn’t any of you watch cartoons growing up?” She swooped around the edges of the room, the missiles close on her heels as she paced herself to keep them bunched up behind her. Then, whoosh, right back around, straight toward the angels, who spun to face her. They may as well been moving in slow motion. She dove, passing between their legs, feeling the heat as the missiles crashed in the crotches of the angels and exploded.
She spun around to find both angels bent over, dropping to their knees groaning, victims of the most painful kick to the nuts in the history of mankind.
She frowned as she saw Sister Amy rising on one knee. She really had expected her to stay down. The priestess raised her head and locked her eyes on Sarah. “You survived outer space. Let’s see how you fare the molten core of the Earth!” She thrust her hand forward, shouting, “Go to hell!”
Sarah tensed, expecting to be instantly dead. She didn’t go anywhere. Sister Amy’s eyes grew wide.
“Skyrider!” a voice crackled in her helmet. “You there?”
“App?” she said, recognizing the familiar voice. She glanced near the door and saw his still crumpled body lying there. “Where are you?”
“The jump room,” he said. “Sorry, things have been crazy here. Sister Amy took control of the techs. I got stuck in ghost mode to keep her from taking control of me. My pals in the App Room just downloaded a patch to the belt that lets it transmit the same psionic shields they use at the White House. It took me, like, ninety seconds once I had that power to capture Sister Amy’s goons and get them locked up. I’m in control of the space machine now.”
“Excellent,” said Sarah. “You
have a lock on Sister Amy?”
“Where do you want her to go?”
“I just received an excellent suggestion.”
“You haven’t won,” said Sister Amy, rising on trembling legs. From the folds of her gown, she pulled a pistol, raising it toward Sarah.
Sarah put her hands on her hips. “I’m bulletproof, remember?”
“She isn’t,” said Sister Amy, swinging her gun toward the corner where Sarah’s mother lay.
“No!” Sarah shouted, though she didn’t hear the word as it left her lips. She was already moving faster than the speed of sound. Her helmet locked onto the bullet’s trajectory. She whipped to a stop in front of her mother’s limp body. The shockwave of her sudden movement was so strong it tossed her mother like a rag doll, slamming her into the wall. Sarah felt the bullet hit the small of her back. She’d already turned before the bullet fell to the floor. She spotted the fallen sword the angel had used to menace her mother. She snatched it up.
Sister Amy stumbled backward, fighting the effects of being hit with yet another sonic boom. The fact that she was still on her feet at all hinted that either she really was protected by the Lord, or that one of her brain trust had whipped up some sort of biological enhancement.
The only thing that mattered to Sarah was that Sister Amy was alert enough to realize what was about to happen. The prophetess turned her face toward Sarah, who flew with sword outstretched. Sister Amy’s face went pale.
With a swift, well-aimed thrust, Sarah finished the fight.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Something Like a Man
With Sister Amy’s head no longer completely attached to her body, Sarah’s next priority was to make sure her angels didn’t recover their wits enough to give her problems. Fortunately, it took only a few seconds to slam them around sufficiently that she was confident the humans inside the armor were thoroughly broken.
She zoomed back to her mother’s side. Her heart sank when she saw how still and gray her mother’s face looked. She dropped to her knees and pulled off her helmet, pressing her ear to her mother’s chest.
